RFD: Remove rec.radio.broadcasting

[Tristan Miller]

This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the moderated
newsgroup rec.radio.broadcasting.


Newsgroups Line:

rec.radio.broadcasting Discussion of global domestic broadcast radio.
(Moderated)


Distribution:
news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals


Proponent: Tristan Miller <tmi...@big-8.org>


Charter:

Rec.radio.broadcasting (r.r.b) will be for discussion of a wide
variety of subjects pertaining to the general arena of
entertainment/information radio. While not specifically limited to
North American broadcasting, r.r.b will avoid dealing with
international (shortwave) broadcasts because this topic is already
being handled in rec.radio.shortwave.

Valid subjects for discussion might include (but not be limited to);

1) Programming and formats
2) Technical and engineering matters
3) Concerns of smaller market stations
4) Innovations and legislation affecting the medium
(and those attempting to enter it)
5) Radio's historical & cultural significance
6) Radio news coverage and it's impact on our nation and our world.
7) Audience input and ideas for improving the state of radio
broadcasting.


Since rec.radio.noncommercial is the only Usenet group pertaining to
domestic broadcast radio, r.r.b would provide a forum for those
individuals who's interest in the medium is not limited to the
non-commercial arena. I believe this group would be of great interest
to Usenet participants because ...

1) Everybody listens to, and is affected by, radio broadcasting. It
is the only mass media in which one can fully participate, while
engaged in another activity.

2) Colleges and universities currently train, and graduate, thousands
of potential radio professionals every year. These individuals
would be very likely to participate in such a forum to discuss and
compare notes on their chosen field of endeavor.

3) The face of radio is always changing. Satellite feeds, automation,
and other influences are molding the future of the medium. This
newsgroup would be a link between interested parties from all
corners of the industry, keeping one-another up to date on the
latest trends impacting radio broadcasting in America an beyond.


Rationale for removal:

On 2021-10-02 the remaining moderation team of rec.radio.broadcasting
announced that the newsgroup would no longer be active due to low
newsgroup activity and their belief that Usenet is obsolete. The
announcement was posted to the newsgroup itself and to several related
venues, including the Radio Discussions blog and several broadcast
radio-related Facebook groups. None of the replies to this
announcement suggested that any replacement moderators were likely to
step forward. The moderation system was therefore shut down a few
weeks after the announcement and no new articles have been approved
since then.

It was suggested that there be a two-year "cooling off" period before
initiating any public discussion to formally remove the group from the
Big-8 hierarchy via an rmgroup, in part to allow extra time for any
replacement moderators to come forward. However, in the last two
years, no prospective moderators have approached the the Big-8
Management Board.

Formally removing the group from the ISC active list will provide
wider public notification that it is no longer active. This will
reduce the chance of people inadvertently posting to the group (and
possibly becoming confused about why their posts never pass
moderation). It will also help ensure that the group is removed or
marked as read-only by news servers and gateways.


History of the Group:

1992-02-24: 1st RFD (create)
1992-03-30: 1st CFV
1992-04-09: 2nd CFV
1992-04-20: 3rd CFV
1992-05-01: Result: rec.radio.broadcasting passes 234:34


Procedure:

Those who wish to comment on this request to remove this newsgroup
should subscribe to news:news.groups.proposals and participate in the
relevant threads in that newsgroup.

To this end, the followup header of this RFD has been set to
news.groups.proposals.

All discussion of active proposals should be posted to
news.groups.proposals.

If desired by the readership of closely affected groups, the
discussion may be crossposted to those groups, but care must be taken
to ensure that all discussion appears in news.groups.proposals as
well.

For more information on the newsgroup removal process, please see
http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Removing_newsgroups


History of this RFD:

2023-12-01: 1st RFD (remove)


--
Usenet Big-8 Management Board
https://www.big-8.org/
bo...@big-8.org

[Marco Moock]

Am 01.12.2023 um 23:03:46 Uhr schrieb Tristan Miller:

> Formally removing the group from the ISC active list will provide
> wider public notification that it is no longer active. This will
> reduce the chance of people inadvertently posting to the group (and
> possibly becoming confused about why their posts never pass
> moderation). It will also help ensure that the group is removed or
> marked as read-only by news servers and gateways.

Are there still reader?
Did somebody post in those 2 years?

[Steve Bonine]

Tristan Miller wrote:

> It was suggested that there be a two-year "cooling off" period before
> initiating any public discussion to formally remove the group from the
> Big-8 hierarchy via an rmgroup, in part to allow extra time for any
> replacement moderators to come forward.  However, in the last two
> years, no prospective moderators have approached the the Big-8
> Management Board.
>
> Formally removing the group from the ISC active list will provide
> wider public notification that it is no longer active.  This will
> reduce the chance of people inadvertently posting to the group (and
> possibly becoming confused about why their posts never pass
> moderation).  It will also help ensure that the group is removed or
> marked as read-only by news servers and gateways.

So for two years there has been the issue of "people inadvertently

posting to the group (and possibly becoming confused about why their

posts never pass moderation)" and now there's a reason to remove the
group? The only result will be the removal of the historical posts in
the newsgroup; I've never seen a newsgroup admin who reacted to a
rmgroup by marking the group read-only. I don't know if "read only" is
even a possibility; I've never seen a newsreader that supported it.

Not that I think there are people clamoring to peruse 20-year-old Usenet
material, but there are many dead moderated newsgroups and I think the
consensus was that removing them is a waste of time when the discussion
was held years ago.

[Tristan Miller]

Greetings.

No, except for this RFD, no one has successfully posted to
rec.radio.broadcasting in the past two years.

Regards,
Tristan

[Tristan Miller]

Greetings.

On 2023-12-02 13:35, Steve Bonine wrote:
> I've never seen a newsgroup admin who reacted to a rmgroup by marking
> the group read-only.  I don't know if "read only" is even a possibility;
> I've never seen a newsreader that supported it.

I'm informed that Google Groups used to process rmgroups by marking the
group as read-only on their news-to-web gateway. Nowadays they don't
seem to process control messages at all, but there may be other
news-to-web or news-to-mail gateways that do.

Regards,
Tristan

[Jesse Rehmer]

On Dec 2, 2023 at 6:35:13 AM CST, "Steve Bonine" <s...@pobox.com> wrote:

> So for two years there has been the issue of "people inadvertently
> posting to the group (and possibly becoming confused about why their
> posts never pass moderation)" and now there's a reason to remove the
> group? The only result will be the removal of the historical posts in
> the newsgroup; I've never seen a newsgroup admin who reacted to a
> rmgroup by marking the group read-only. I don't know if "read only" is
> even a possibility; I've never seen a newsreader that supported it.
>
> Not that I think there are people clamoring to peruse 20-year-old Usenet
> material, but there are many dead moderated newsgroups and I think the
> consensus was that removing them is a waste of time when the discussion
> was held years ago.

I'm building a Usenet archive and have my server setup to not automatically
process rmgroup control messages, but instead mail them to me for review. Then
I set the group(s) not to allow local posts. I'm a rarity, I think.

INN has these options for a newsgroup's status that change behavior when a
server receives an article:

y Local postings and articles from peers are allowed.
m The group is moderated and all postings must be approved.
n No local postings are allowed, only articles from peers.
j Articles from peers are filed in the junk group instead.
x No local postings, and articles from peers are ignored.
=foo.bar Articles are filed in the group foo.bar instead.

It would be nice if there were an automatic way to change the group's status
to 'n' or 'x' from a rmgroup control message instead of removing the group,
but I'm likely one of very few administrators who care to preserve old group
contents.

[Steve Bonine]

This is interesting information. My question is ... what is the user
experience related to these status settings? Does the reader get any
notice that they cannot post to the group? Of course, this is a
somewhat unanswerable question since the user experience is determined
by the news reader, not the news server.

And yes, you are a rarity, but the moniker "runs news server" is enough
to insure that status.

[Jesse Rehmer]

Servers should return a 441 response (posting failed), at least INN's nnrpd
does, how clients interpret/display varies greatly.

The raw message returned from my server when this occurs is:

441 Postings to "some.group.not.allowed" are not allowed here

[Russ Allbery]

Jesse Rehmer <jesse....@blueworldhosting.com> writes:

> Servers should return a 441 response (posting failed), at least INN's
> nnrpd does, how clients interpret/display varies greatly.

> The raw message returned from my server when this occurs is:

> 441 Postings to "some.group.not.allowed" are not allowed here

The drawback, of course, is that by that point the reader has already
written their post.

Ideally, the client should figure out that it will never be able to post
to that group and not allow the user to start. I think the only standard
way to do that is to parse the newsgroup flags from LIST ACTIVE. The
extensions discussed here are documented in RFC 6048, but I'm not sure how
widely implemented they are. They've been in INN forever, but were never
that widely used, and there's no standardized way to set any of those
other fields in control messages. (RFC 5537 allows other control message
verbs for newgroup, but no other ones have been standardized.)

--
Russ Allbery (ea...@eyrie.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

[Steve Bonine]

noel wrote:

> On Sat, 02 Dec 2023 06:35:13 -0600, Steve Bonine wrote:
>>
>> So for two years there has been the issue of "people inadvertently
>> posting to the group (and possibly becoming confused about why their
>> posts never pass moderation)" and now there's a reason to remove the
>> group? The only result will be the removal of the historical posts in
>> the newsgroup; I've never seen a newsgroup admin who reacted to a
>> rmgroup by marking the group read-only. I don't know if "read only" is
>> even a possibility; I've never seen a newsreader that supported it.
>>
>> Not that I think there are people clamoring to peruse 20-year-old Usenet
>> material, but there are many dead moderated newsgroups and I think the
>> consensus was that removing them is a waste of time when the discussion
>> was held years ago.
>

> Late to the party I know, but, how about just removing the moderation and
> allow the group to remain, just, "open"

Since you're following up to my post, maybe that encourages me to answer
your question, which has been asked countless times in the life of
Usenet. So I will be brief.

Usenet is a decentralized facility with each server admin following
their own rules. If a control message was sent in an attempt to change
the moderation status of the group, some systems would act on it and
some would not. This would change, not fix, the problem; if you posted
on a system of the first flavor you would see your post but it would not
be seen on the other flavor of system where the newsgroup was still
marked as moderated.

But ... why bother? Who is going to post to a newsgroup that has been
dead for years?

And ... why bother with attempting to remove THIS newsgroup when there
are MANY dead moderated newsgroups in the list.